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Answer from: U.S. Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA)

Inequitable conduct is seldom proved but almost always alleged. Right now in litigation it costs a fortune to prove you didn’t do something wrong when applying for your patent or in the use of your patent. That’s an example where the cost of litigation is simply rising. The other major issue that we’re seeing is the question of apportionment. If there are a thousand patents making up a product, what part is the infringement of one patent supposed to play? And its very important because if you have the Intel microprocessor inside a Pentium product, you have so many different patents, that if one person says you violated one small feature should they get the whole computer or the whole computer industry. Obviously they shouldn’t but the balancing has not been legislated in a way that’s predictable. We need to do that. We sent a bill out of the House based on an agreement with the Senate and the Senate hasn’t picked it up because they haven’t been able to deal with the two remaining issues, apportionment and inequitable conduct. Amazingly, in between, the obviosness standard was changed by the courts, something we were trying to change in legislation. So as we’re not acting, the court is repeatedly coming up, taking cases that are changing the law based on Supreme Court decisions. I’m not objecting to that. It’s only because we failed to act.

Answered on Jun 19th, 2008